I’m trying to finish this “ribbon drawing” tool. It is now stable, allowing users to add, reset and erase the shapes. I also added some new physics simulations (attraction, wind) and fixed others — springs are stable and oscillation can interact with other simulations.

Finally, I added the option to “playback” the drawing and record everything as a png sequence — so people can use it to make videos.

1. The topic you are interested in for your final.
Personal finances. I am still pursuing a way to approach the topic in a different way from the existing apps.
I want to make a Chrome extension that will convert any money value from any web page to time value. For example, while navigating through the Amazon website, users would see values such as “5 hours”, “3 months,” “15 minutes” etc.

2. How you will research (find data, check its source, further investigation).
We* are still discussing how exactly this conversion will work. Our first idea was to make a simple (total income)/(total hours of work) calculation. Though simple and straightforward, this equation might not make sense for everyone. People we have been talking to have mentioned a different value for working time and leisure time, for instance.
Anyway, the extension will certainly ask users for some information before making any conversion. It also needs to connect to an online service to check exchange rates — to convert values between different currencies.

3. What is the story you are trying to tell? THIS MUST BE ONE SENTENCE ONLY.
How people can see the money they spend through a non-monetary perspective.

4. What kind of visualization you want to make (bar, pie, tree, etc.)
The final result doesn’t fit in any of these visual categories. Instead, the intention is to display the converted value as html text, using the same styling as the original monetary value. That is important to keep the visual consistency of the page.
Also, I think that “visualization” should refer to any device that helps people understand better a set of information. That can be achieved by means other than “visuals.”
In the case of this project, translating money to time is a way of making people “see” their spendings in a more insightful manner. This translation doesn’t have the intention of making people spend less, save more money, plan for the future etc — the usual goals of regular finance apps. Instead, it proposes a critical view on the topic that might be interpreted differently according to each individual’s relationship with his/her own money and time.

Third iteration of the movie mashup project. Now searching for specific words in a movie — also based on the subtitle.
I am not counting the words in Processing, so I copied and pasted the subtitles from “The Wolf of Wall Street” into Textalyser. The first words by far in the ranking are “you” and “what” — not very meaningful, though.

So I used “fucking,” third one with 211 occurrences. Taking a look at the full list, “fuck” and “fucking” also appear a lot of times. Because they are sort of variations of the same thing, I searched for any time that any of them is said — 431 times total. That happens in 351 subtitles — sometimes more than once in a single line, then.

Another iteration of the movie mashup project. This one searches for repeated lines in a movie. Also based on the subtitles file.
“Groundhog Day” was an obvious choice because of its repeating plot. Interesting to notice that some of the repeated scenes were certainly shot at once, because Bill Murray’s hair looks exactly the same.

This is the first attempt towards my proposal for a generative movie mashup. The code is based on the same Processing sketch I used before to make a mashup book.
The subtitles’ time code (start and end) are used to play the movie jumping from one position to another.
The lines are sorted alphabetically and the video editing is automated based on that.